You know this passage from a wedding you were in or attended. But what is Paul, a single, tent maker and Old Testament scholar doing writing about love? There must be something more going on than a wedding sermon.
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Help! I’m Preaching Through Esther.
Rather than a story of how things ought to be, Esther shows us how someone was faithful in the world as it is: painful, fear-filled, and potential hopeless. Only God offers a way out. Perhaps He has us right where He wants us to be a part of His bigger redemption story.
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A Missionary Kid, a President, and the Challenger Tragedy
To summarize the national pain, the president quoted from a poem written by a Canadian fighter pilot who had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Born in Shanghai, China in 1922, John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was the son of Canadian and American parents serving as Anglican missionaries to the region.
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God, Our Fortress in Pandemic and Calamity
“In the actual moment history is made, it is usually made in terror and confusion” Tom Junod scribed in his iconic “The Falling Man” reflection on the September 11, 2001 attacks. Junod rightly observed the relentless responsibility of the photographer to record what they see knowing that “history” will formulate around their images later. In the moment, it just happens in chaos and blood. As we weather our own tumultuous season, we must consider how we will distill the lessons of this moment from the snapshots of our experiences.
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Ants, Augustine, and Preparing for Spiritual Winter
The ongoing heath crisis and cultural and legal events have sent many Christians into confusion and chaos. It has challenged and exposed my deeply rooted problems in American Christianity. Many are choosing to lash out in anger. Others turn to fear. While others double down on politics as their last hope to maintain life as they know it. However, Augustine (354-430) has some great wisdom on Proverbs chapter 6 that turns the familiar passage used to prod lazy Jamestownians and Pilgrims off their 17th-century log couches into a ballad of spiritual preparation.
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The Old Redemption Story: Illustrations from the Book of Ruth
The book of Ruth begins in brokenness. The time of the Judges had seen people go from obedient and devoted followers of God to fickle and nameless wanderers who came to Him temporarily in their times of greatest distress. The first chapter records how one family even leaves God’s “Promised Land” to seek life elsewhere. The book of Ruth is short but deep. We see suffering, but we see restoration. The hope of the Gospel is very much alive even centuries before the arrival of the Messiah. This outsider and foreigner teaches us what it’s like to be an insider with God. In the midst of broken times, we are reminded that God knows us by name. When we are tempted to look back at how things used to be, we learn that there is nothing better behind us than the God before us. For all of us whose paradise has ever been broken, let’s make Ruth’s God of restoration our God too! Where He goes, we go.
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Responsibility and Unity in Evangelism from the Early Church
The desire to expand the church through evangelism is not a new concept that began with the modern missions or evangelical movements. It is as old as the church itself. Much writing from the early church on the topic focuses on the dual aspects of urgency and unity. They found great beauty in the miracle of a world-wide fellowship that brought together all nations, but they believed the good news entrusted to them had to be spread quickly before it was too late.
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Alexander MaClaren
“Let me remind you of some instances and illustrations”: Alexander MaClaren on Matthew 24:28
In the years when men’s beards resided like manes upon their necks for fear of their chins, Alexander MaClaren (1826-1910) preached the Gospel in the British Isles. Scottish by birth, Londoner by raising, he was a prolific Non-Conformist minister of the Baptist persuasion. Of his many accomplishments, one worth highlighting is his ability and willingness to connect theological truth to understandable events in history. One particular sermon demonstrates this to the maximum as the illustration virtuoso launches into a tour de force of no less than five stories back to back to make his point. The selected text? The single, enigmatic verse of Matthew 24:28.
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Henceforth all the Johns Shall Speak of Christmas
Chrysostom believed the dawn’s early light of that first Christmas morning should inspire a world holding its breath for redemption. Radiant beams illuminated souls where it had been always night and never morning. Finally, all humanity could live with hope in this post-Christmas era.
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Is She Worthy?: The Medieval Church’s Dark History of Violence against Women
Social progress doesn’t fix every problem. Healthy doctrinal shifts don’t always fix cultural biases. Even the Reformation that so many Protestants cling to as the greatest spiritual salve of all time didn’t begin to mend many deep-seated sins. Unfortunately, this is evident in the sordid history of violence against women in the church, by the church, and for the church. The suspect status of women in portions of modern Christianity is the ugly gargoyle adorning the beautiful Bride of Christ—blatantly grotesque to all on the outside but invisible to the worshipers inside.
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Why the Church Still Needs Malachi (and not just for the tithing verse)
Malachi is a book about corruption and justice. Corruption still lives today as we find ourselves standing on the brink of forgetting the final covenant between God and mankind. We must learn from the last precipice as the prophet of a dying age leaned over his own Nebo to glimpse the coming Messiah. Today’s church still needs Malachi. Your church still needs Malachi.
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Stotts City Baptist Church
The Genealogy of Your Faith and the Value of Social Historical Theology
It was a clear and hot Sunday for October in Southwest Missouri. The doors of Stotts City Baptist Church opened to invite a breeze as the temperature climbed to 88 degrees outside. Inside, a fervor of God brought another kind of warmth that was unique to such a small outpost in God’s Kingdom. A young father had surrendered to a call to preach, and the church body rallied to recognize and endorse this divine appointment.
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Parables of the Kingdom: Sermon Illustrations from Matthew 13:44-46
The value of the Kingdom of God is unparalleled in these two short parables of Jesus. Here are some brief illustrations and quotes that will help reinforce the priceless treasure Jesus offers you and me.
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Rest for the Weary, Working Soul: Finding the Answer to Humanity’s Greatest Quest in one of Zwingli’s Favorite Passages
For Zwingli, the Christian can have assurance that Jesus offers rest for weary souls because of “the clarity and certainty of the Word of God.” Without this sure foundation, the faithful are subject to a life of uncertainty and toil, constantly re-plowing the ground that God has already prepared in their own lives.
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Bernard of Clairvaux and His Song of Songs Sermon Series: An Introduction to the First 20
“And now that we have passed through the shadow-land of allegories, it is time to explore the great plains of mortal truths. Our faith has been strengthened, let our lives reveal its influence; our intellects have been enlightened, let them prescribe the right behavior. For they have sound sense who do this, if they direct their actions and understanding toward the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever.”
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Henry Vaughan, an Old Man, and the Peace of Faithfulness
If our search for God is unsettled, there is a cure. As we watch biblical figures faithfully await the premiere advent, we learn how to better find our own peace in our faithful anticipation of the sequel. As Matthew 25:6 says: “at midnight there was a cry,” someone will shout ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’”
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Take up your [Sword] Daily: Beliefs about Salvation During the Spanish Reconquista
Even among the strangest medieval twistings of theology, it is sometimes possible to see the faintly flickering elements of the Gospel. While many sought to adapt the Scripture to fit their needs, a few found in its pages the hope and mission of Christ to make disciples of all nations.
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“Because We Need Him:” Historical Sermon Illustrations from Matthew 9:12
“But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.” – Matthew 9:12 (NASB)
“I try to be as good as I can”
From Charles H. Spurgeon’s “The Great Physician and His Patients,” 1865
Read MoreA minister, when he had done preaching in a country village, said to a farm-labourer who had been listening to him, “Do you think Jesus Christ died to save good people, or bad people?” “Well, sir,” said the man, “I should say he died to save good people.” “But did he die to save bad people?” “No, sir; no, certainly not, sir.” “Well, then, what will become of you and me?” “Well, sir, I do not know. I dare say you be pretty good, sir; and I try to be as good as I can.”
Cry Like Charlemagne: Letting History Teach us How to Grieve
The human experience is one of loss but let us not forget those who have gone before us to lay their own pavers into the road of grief that we all must travel. Take their hand and lean on their tired shoulders for a few miles.
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The Dead Writer Sings the Loudest: A Call to Read Works of Historical Theology
"Should I read historical theologians in my personal discipleship time?"
Of course, any writer at historicaltheology.org will answer with a resounding “yes!” Yet, the vast majority of Christians never consider the 2000 years of thoughts and scriptural reflections from those saints, hermits, and religious vagabonds who went before them.
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